Colorado is home to Vestas factories, will its headquarters follow?

Colorado is home to a $1 billion in Vestas Wind System factories, could the North American headquarters, now in Portland, Oregon, follow?

A report in the Portland Oregonian has created a flurry of speculation and a reported all-hands meeting Thursday morning at the wind turbine makers Portland office, according to Vestas staffers.

“We made a pitch for the headquarters as part of the Front Range investment back around 2008,” said Tom Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. “Portland put up a great incentive package.”

Aarhus, Denmark-based Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine maker, did build four Colorado factories – one in Windsor, two in Brighton and one in Pueblo – that now employ about about 1,500, with plans to add more workers. That comes after a contraction in the wind turbine business in 2012,forced Vestas to slash its workforce to about 1,000 from 1,700.

As well as the incentive package, Vestas may have also chosen Portland because it is more like Copenhagen with its harbor and ocean front — just mountains to be had in Colorado, a Vestas staffer said.

A new president of Vestas North America may , however, be changing the equation, according to The Portland Oregonian story. Chris Brown was brought on in 2012 to rejuvenate the company’s North American business. Brown reportedly is the proponent of the move.

“We did meet with the new CEO and told him we’d be interested,” said Clark. “There was nothing definite.”

The word from Vestas in Denmark was noncommittal. “Vestas is continuously looking for opportunities to optimize our geographic footprint across the globe, and it’s no different in the United States,” Michael Zarin, the company’s chief spokesman, said in a statement.”No decisions have been made regarding the Vestas presence in Portland.”

“That’s what I can tell you,” Zarin said.

Metro Denver’s Clark said he didn’t expect a quick announcement. “We don’t see anything on the horizon,” Clark said. “Such a move would have to be approved by regulators in Denmark.”

Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.